Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday May 12, 2008 @10:40AM
from the must-protect-general's-secret-recipe dept.

alphadogg writes "An interview with James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has experienced 'The Great Firewall of China' firsthand, an experience people from around the world will share this summer when the Olympics comes to that country. Based in Beijing, Fallows has researched the underlying technology that the Chinese use for Internet censorship. One good thing to know: With VPNs and proxies, you can get around it pretty easily." Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?

But, eventually, corporate pandering will lead to greater economic freedom for the Chinese, and then, ultimately, greater political freedom.

I don't mean to sound elitist, but most Chinese people in the USA that I have talked to have basically said that yes, while more human rights and freedom of speech would be nice, the problem is that the Chinese peasant class is so uneducated and so poor that there is a huge risk of total social chaos if China adopts the Glasnost route. They want to avoid a Soviet - collapse style meltdown.

Convincing the people that the government is the only thing standing between them and chaos is a classic tactic of totalitarian governments. (Now think about what the American government is currently doing....)However, given China's recent history, I'm not even sure they're wrong. The country went through a lot of chaos before the Communists took things over and got the country settled down. I've talked to people old enough to have been around a fair bit before the Communists gained control and I've never h

Actually, Russia has lately been sliding back into old Soviet ways recently. Putin is ex-KGB, and his hand-picked successor recently became president. Most media outlets are very fearful of criticizing the government. I wouldn't exactly point to Russia and call it a success story.

Do you realize China is the biggest US creditor (US being neck deep in debt) and holds the biggest reserve of US dollars outside US? All those trillions US is borrowing are underwritten by China. You're deluding yourself if you think US can pressure China economically.

No, no no. If all you want is for the CCP government to go down, then certainly that is what would work the fastest. However, the chaotic situation that would arise would be an economic disaster taking away the wealth gained by normal Chinese. It is a popular misconception in the West that the CCP is incompetent and corrupt and only exists for the sake of party members, but the fact is that even in a one-party state there is politics, and there is discussion and debate, and the system works. It's authoritarian, sure, and it's a mistake not to allow freer public discussion (even with such, I believe the government would still have great support of the people), but the system is not tyrannic, and while far from as democratic as Western democracies we must remember that there are differences between Western democracies, notably with a trainwreck of a two-party plutocratic system in the USA. The Chinese government has done a lot more good for the environment than the US government has, for example, with limits on car emissions that would be impossible for the US to meet, and energy efficiency markings for electronics. Would Americans not be offended if Swiss people claimed that the American political system needed to collapse? Anyway, you're very uninformed about the current state of the world economy if you believe that the West could cause the Chinese economy to collapse without taking an enourmous hit itself.

Reading posts like this, and seeing hundreds of Chinese protest outside Tous Les Jours, a bakery chain here in Beijing, because they thought it was French (hint: it's Korean!) just makes me wonder how diplomacy between different countries ever works. It's all a bunch of chauvinistic cheerleading for whatever country you happened to be born in, with stretching of and invention of facts and a complete disregard of the views of the other part. Chinese people know they don't have a proper democracy. They don't mind this fact as much as Westerners want them to. Now I'll go back to try to convince Chinese people of the benefits of Western democracy and that the Western media is not a single-faceted entity/hate machine directed at discrediting China, but in fact allows for having several different opinions...

Back on the subject of the Great Firewall, I'm posting from behind it, and I don't know any internet user here who does NOT know how to activate a proxy of some sort for the sites that aren't available.

Your credibility is null. Funny how you accuse others of nationalist cheer leading while you ignore that 16 of 20 of the world's most polluted cities are in China.

Just as the world's most polluted citie were in the U.S. when the U.S. was developing. Remember the U.S. river that caught on fire? China is actually making an anti-pollution effort at a much earlier stage of development than the U.S. did.

For God's sake! This trite is *not* insightful. To make such patently absurd arguments about the problems of the 2 party American political system and then compare them to a system like the Chinese is irresponsible and without merit. No one doubts that there are issues in American politics, but it's a hell of a lot better than any communist system.

It is ridiculous to claim that China is Communist; today's China is Communist only in the name of its ruling party. China is a capitalist country; you mustn't confuse Communist with Authoritarian, which China indeed is. And I did not say that the Chinese political system is better or as good at working for the public good as the American system, I said that there are different levels of democracy, with the Swiss style of direct democracy at one end, and absolute dictatorships at the other end. China is clo

But that isn't true today. The crushing tyranny has produced stability when "other" governments have created economic chaos. China now effectively owns the USA, and has the humanpower to overwhelm it in every way short of military might (though I would not call a nuclear defeat a win).

I would call myself a supporter of "raising" the people of China to middle class standards of "the west" but the west seems determined to eradicate the middle class leaving only lords and serfs.

For all those warm-heart western people, who can't tolerate others suffer, please give some patience to the Chinese. Democracy is happening in China. The pace may be too slow from your POV. But ask yourself how long it took for the USA to develop to the current democratic status.

But, at what stage (if you're not into the whole FDR-coup thing) did the US go through its Fascist phase? That's where China is now, and it's hard to see a transition to anything like democracy from that place. Once you start revvi

The various stages don't have to happen in the same order. The U.S.A. is definitely entering a fascist stage. Overextended empire, Homeland Security, warrantless wiretaps, obedient, self-censoring media, torture -- these are all signs of a fascist takeover.

Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?

Ask the international Olypmic commitee what they were thinking. The companies that make money off of the broadcasting and related licensing are going to make money regardless of where the games are held. It would likely be a lot easier, logistically, NOT to have to put up with the Chinese nonsense while moving the media army into place to cover the games. Which corporations are being pandered to, here? The corporation that is China? They (the Chinese) promised all sorts of open access and press freedom as part of the package they pitched while trying to seduce the panel that chooses the venues. They were obviously lying, a lot. How that broadly strokes "corporate" interests enough to refer to it that way in the summary is not clear enough in the summary to warrant that particular bit of editorial spin.

China has more problems than you mentioned. Aside from the deceit with the IOC, The just had a huge earthquake, still need to save face over the Tibet issues, and in general terms have to maintain face or risk losing sales of Chinese made products worldwide.If the 'Great Firewall' turns the Olympics into a fiasco, or the Chinese themselves do so, if even half it's trading partners boycott, it would seriously dampen China's fiscal ardor. They have gotten themselves into a 'put up or shut up' position. Lets j

Just about everything we purchase now is produced in China. Sure it would hurt China a lot of a country were to boycott them. But it would also hurt their own citizens. Not only would consumers be unable to purchase products from China, but businesses would be unable to outsource labour to China in order to keep prices low. While I think China needs to change their ways, I don't know if boycotting Chinese products is really feasible from an economic standpoint.

There's a slight problem with that. First of all, the population of Mexico is around 100 million. The population of China is over 1.2 billion. Also, the GPD per capita of Mexico is $12,000. The GPD per capita of China is $5300. It would probably cost at least twice as much to hire a Mexican worker, as it would a Chinese worker.

I have to say, if you lined up the Olympic committee, the corporations involved in this Olympics, and the Chinese government, I would say the Chinese government inspires more trust than the other two. All three are self-serving, but the Chinese government are the most socially responsible of the lot.

ll three are self-serving, but the Chinese government are the most socially responsible of the lot.

I see. That would be the China that just shouted down any attempt by the UN to even hold discussions about whether to try to bypass the Burma junta and get international aid directly to the million people that are about to die there? That IS socially responsible!

And corporations? They exist to serve the people that form and invest in them. That's their actual purpose. Of course, many of them are lining up to provide goods and services to aid the people who are about to die in Burma, while China and Russia are backing the junta's demands to funnel all of the aid through them (you know, the people who elected not to warn their coastal population that they were about to die in droves, even though the rest of the world scrambled to let that military regime know what was about to happen). You know, the military regime that is confiscating such aid as IS allowed to land there, and which they are labeling with their own stickers and political propoganda before handing it out. You know, the military regime that China is insulating from so much as a formal rebuke from the UN.

What's your motivation, here, exactly? You find the Chinese government - who jail and even kill people for saying the sorts of things you can sit at a US corporate desk and say all day long, and who harbor and sanction outright network vandalism and malware propogation around the world, and prop up hell holes like North Korea - more trustworthy than Honda, or Bayer, or LG, or Nokia, or Virgin Atlantic, or AMD, or your local grocery store chain? Really?

Corporations will go over corpses to make profit for their shareholders, as long as they can get away with it.Chinese government does a lot of shit that's inexcusable. But they did ultimately take a rural country with a few percent literacy and turn it into one of the world's strongest economies. They did a lot of crap on the way (The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution), but they also did a lot of good on the way. During roughly this same time, the trustworthy, people-serving IBM was manufacturing

I dunno, the Chinese government doesn't strike me as being particularly socially responsible. They may do their best to maintain order and stop various "vices", but their environmental record totally stinks. That they apparently couldn't give a rat's ass about Beijing's polluted air for so long, and then suddenly decided that It Must All Be Cleaned Up right when a horde of foreigners are about to descend upon the city doesn't speak well for them at all. For whatever reason, they seem to be more concerned wi

Indeed it's no longer the ingenious neologism it once was, but have you a more apropos term in mind?I think it still captures the spirit of the system quite well -- As a firewall, China's filter network keeps things the Party wants to keep out from entering, and things it wants to keep from getting out from leaving. And I think the visual of China's iconic, ancient landmark actually makes for an excellent metaphor for both the scale and the socially archaic nature of the system.

They can put needles in collars of soldiers to force them to stay at attention (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=564629&in_page_id=1811&ct=5)but they can't figure out how to block the internet from their people.

In their recent book, Who Controls the Internet, law professors Timothy Wu and Jack Goldsmith have a nice section on China. Their argument is that effective control does not require total control. Yes, it is possible for internet users in China to circumvent government controls, but as long as these controls work well enough for the average user -- who as other commentators have noted, have other concerns and priorities -- then the Chinese government has effective control. An educated Western user who has certain expectations for the internet, and who has the technical resources necessary to access proxies, can perhaps (relatively) easily bypass government controls. But that does not mean that these controls, combined with logging and fear of reprisals, are not very effective.

And, of course, China is a large market for many firms, and therefore the Chinese government has leverage to exert their influence over a set of intermediaries -- Yahoo and Google, for example -- to make their control effective (again, not perfect).

China wants the olympics because it makes them a legitimate major nation in the international sphere, not an automatic enemy.Suddenly we're giving them the olympics but making demands about Tibet.

Why Tibet?

I am serious- of all injustices in the world why has the Western world particularly adopted Tibet? No matter how you look at it, it's a rightful conquest. Do we expect France to come over and tell us to relinquish Puerto Rico? No- imperialist gains are imperialist gains. I don't see why China's dominion i

I am serious- of all injustices in the world why has the Western world particularly adopted Tibet? No matter how you look at it, it's a rightful conquest. Do we expect France to come over and tell us to relinquish Puerto Rico? No- imperialist gains are imperialist gains. I don't see why China's dominion is evil while ours is not.

One suspects that if I made the same argument and replaced 'China' with 'the United States' and 'Tibet' with 'Iraq' that I'd be quickly modded troll. And since you mentioned Puerto Rico -- are we repressing an independence movement in Puerto Rico at gunpoint? Are the people of Tibet free to vote in local elections and choose their own destiny as the people of Puerto Rico are?

They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.

If I made the same argument about Native Americans I'd be modded down faster then you can say "gunpowder". What the hell gives one group of people the right to impose "modernization" on another group of less well armed people? This isn't the 19th century anymore.

One suspects that if I made the same argument and replaced 'China' with 'the United States' and 'Tibet' with 'Iraq' that I'd be quickly modded troll. And since you mentioned Puerto Rico -- are we repressing an independence movement in Puerto Rico at gunpoint? Are the people of Tibet free to vote in local elections and choose their own destiny as the people of Puerto Rico are?

Tibet is technically an "autonomous region". What that means is obviously questionable in reference to Chinese power. Despite this, I am positive that Tibet can not vote themselves out of Chinese control, the same way that Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands likely cannot.

If I made the same argument about Native Americans I'd be modded down faster then you can say "gunpowder". What the hell gives one group of people the right to impose "modernization" on another group of less well armed people? This isn't the 19th century anymore.

But we didn't modernize the native americans- at all. We simply kicked them off the fertile land and built in their place. In fact, one might go so far as to point out that we placed them at various points across the country with the le

There's nothing stopping either of those places from moving towards Independence if the population was so inclined. Palau [wikipedia.org] obtained Independence. So did the Federated States of Micronesia [wikipedia.org]. There is actually a Puerto Rican Independence Party [independencia.net] too -- though they don't currently have the support of the majority of the population (which sees benefits in remaining an American Commonwealth), but they do exist. Think China would tolerate the creation of a Tibetan Independence Party?

Whether or not you think it's right, these people are no longer serfs. Although they don't know it yet- that's a good thing. You really need to take a long hard look at what life in China is really about before you start acting like it's a nation of slaves. Pre-1959 Tibet was a nation of slaves.

There's nothing stopping either of those places from moving towards Independence if the population was so inclined.

I thought the Civil War has already decided the de facto stance the US has regarding secession of states? States are basically allowed self-rule, up to the point of seceding, and then all hell breaks loose.

Whether or not you think it's right, these people are no longer serfs. Although they don't know it yet- that's a good thing

Besides, Tibet was a theocratic feudal kingdom before China invaded, where most people were serfs who lived in hovels underneath lords. They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.

China has invested so much infrastructure in Tibet that it would be ludicrous to pull out and reinstall their God-King.

China invaded a no-name forbidden kingdom in the mountains and actually improved their quality of life

Nothing justifies Imperialism

Do you not see the ridiculous contradictions in your own statements? "Nothing justifies Imperialism", yet you've devoted many of your statements to justifying it! You bemoan "American fascist economic policies" while condoning and justifying cultural imperialism on the part of China. Pot, kettle, black.

Like I'm sure the US and Europe gained all their power using naturally aspirated internal structuring- but they did not

Yes, we engaged in our fair share of imperialism. It was wrong then and it's wrong today. Pointing out past (or even current) imperialistic oppression on the part of the West does not

You don't see a contradiction with saying that nothing justifies imperialism while simultaneously justifying it?

am merely implying that the US does not have hold over what is right and wrong- we are not the bastion nor vanguards of freedom

The notion that we can't criticize human rights failings because we ourselves aren't 100% perfect serves no one besides the oppressive regimes of the World.

The United States DOES NOT police the world.

Where did I advocate for 'policing' this situation? All I said was that the World doesn't owe China a free ride. Personally I won't be watching the Olympics and I'm considering trying to setup a boycott of any company that sponsors

Well I think Tibet is better off as part of China. I don't believe in feudalism nor theocracy- and I recognize that the nation is too impoverished to develop without China's support

You assume that the people want to develop. Did it ever occur to you that maybe they don't? I find it rather disturbing that you simultaneously justify China's involvement in Tibet because the people are "better off" while discouraging any attempt to improve the quality of life for the billion people living under the regime in Beijing.

China doesn't export its human rights violations like we do with our little foray into Iraq

I know some genocide victims in the Sudan that might disagree with that statement.

and for that reason it's a waste of time and trade potential to attack them over it.

"Attack them over it"? There you go again putting words into my mouth -- where

Isolation may have been the Bush administration's mantra for stopping "evil", but I rather think embrace and extend works a lot better.

Again, I never advocated that we 'isolate' China. You are either a Chinese nationalist shrill or someone who is too dense to read my posts before you reply to them.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree here. Personally I won't be watching the Olympics. Personally I won't buy products from those companies that choose to sponsor them. You do as you wish -- I clearly have no influence over you.

Honestly, after Iraq, I'm done with dissidents and governments in exile.

That's a pretty ridiculous thing to say. Gandhi, Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi were/are all dissidents. During WWII we had governments-in-exile for Norway, the Netherlands, and France, who had popular support and went on to set up stable governments after the war's end.

Yet because the propaganda of some CIA-backed fraudster happened to have been seized upon by Bush et al. to justify an illegal war, then all dissidents and all governme

Yet because the propaganda of some CIA-backed fraudster happened to have been seized upon by Bush et al. to justify an illegal war, then all dissidents and all governments-in-exile are unworthy of recognition or credit?

It ought to be considered, therefore, how vain are the faith and promises of those who find themselves deprived of their country.... such is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise in which you ruin yours

Well, believe that if you must. But do realize the implications of the position you're taking: if no government-in-exile is legitimate, then every puppet government set up by a conqueror must be. During World War II this fellow [wikipedia.org] was the legitimate leader of Norway and this fellow [wikipedia.org] the legitimate leader of the Netherlands. Your earlier statements suggest you are opposed to preemptive war, so you presumably oppose the conquest in the first place. But once effected you cannot oppose conquest because the

Okay, this view isn't new... but then you go and say that it was the Iraq war, alone of all things in history, that pushed you to it? I don't even know what to say. For someone who thought Bush was full of crap from the start and hopes for some improvement in the world, this sort of seamless progression from warmongering triumphalism to world-encompassing defeatism is pretty frickin' hard to take.

I am in favor of total isolation because I believed the Iraqi dissidents. I was in favor of this war and the Bu

I am in favor of total isolation because I believed the Iraqi dissidents. I was in favor of this war and the Bush administration and honestly, the price of this intervention was too high.

Fair enough... but there's a wide gulf between wanting the U.S. to be the world's policeman and simply acknowledging (as an individual, even) that there do exist legitimate dissidents or governments-in-exile.

Fair enough... but there's a wide gulf between wanting the U.S. to be the world's policeman and simply acknowledging (as an individual, even) that there do exist legitimate dissidents or governments-in-exile

Not really. We can acknowledge the dissidents who want to be free by inviting them to the United States to become citizens. We can honor those dissidents who genuinely cherish freedom by cherishing it ourselves, by building a country that lives up to its Statue of Liberty and by having a nation that wo

Your isolationist philosophy has been tried before. It failed miserably [wikipedia.org]. Let me just pick one of your statements:

don't even like the idea of having US troops stationed as tripwires designed to bring America into some local war. Like, why do I care, about South Korean independence at this point

Why do you care about South Korean independence? Maybe you don't. But you do care (or should) about nuclear proliferation. If we were to withdraw from the Western Pacific then Japan would likely feel compelled to obtain her own nuclear deterrent. There's a good chance that South Korea and maybe even Taiwan would as well. Do you think that the Chinese would be all that happy to see Japa

I'm not the biggest fan of an interventionist foreign policy but I think it's foolhardy to argue that the United States should become an isolationist nation again.

If we are going to extend Pax Americana into the next century, then we are going to have to have a significant and long term expansion of the US armed forces. Iraq has shown that we do not have the strength of fight a long term projected war and right now our alliances demand we may have to fight several of them.

The alternative is to keep a low profile, disengage ourselves from various trouble spots in the world, invest in ourselves, and, if they nuke each other, its really their problem, not ours.

Except that history tells us that wars involving "them" have a nasty habit of sucking us in sooner or later. If we withdrew from the World and adopted your attitude then sooner or later some aggressor country would threaten our interests (ala Japanese actions in China before Pearl Harbor) somewhere and force us to get involved. Even if they didn't directly threaten our interests would you really want the United States sitting idly by if a Democratic nation was threatened? If Germany was threatened? T

If we withdrew from the World and adopted your attitude then sooner or later some aggressor country would threaten our interests (ala Japanese actions in China before Pearl Harbor)

At some point, you have to ask the question, just what the hell were our interests in China prior to World War II? I mean, whatever it was, everything we did for China during World War II didn't buy us a damn thing - 5 years after World War II ended, we were fighting the Chinese in Korea.

Well, like now there were a lot of commercial interests there. There was also a lot of outrage over Japanese actions [wikipedia.org] in China and prior Japanese acts towards the United States [wikipedia.org]. The Japanese also believed (wrongly, as it turned out) that they couldn't go after the colonial empires of Europe without involving the United States. The combination of all of these things led to a deterioration of relations and the fateful Japanese decision to try and destroy the our Pacific Fleet at the outset. The rest is

Actually, I think the big problem at the moment is the separatist movement within Tibet itself. (It was probably inevitable that one would form sooner or later, given the circumstances.) Also, for better or worse, the government in exile do seem to have both support from Tibetan citizens and an inflow of fresh exiles.

What right did the protesters have to burn the families and businesses of Han Chinese?

What right did those Han Chinese have to move into the homeland of the Tibetan people while aiming to make them a minority in their own country? Following your logic the Palestinians in the West Bank have no right to attack Jewish settlers and the Israeli occupation thereof is only to 'protect' their citizens.

Tibet is unusual because (Tibetan) Buddhism has an image of peace and goodwill. When people think of Buddhism, they're much more likely to think of meditation and peaceful monks than the feudalism that it had years ago. Similarly, there's a huge difference between a man shooting a little old lady and that same man shooting a drug dealer. There was a victim in both cases, yet the old lady will receive much more sympathy. It's just how psychology works. Whether Tibet is better off is largely debatable. Hell,

Umm, because a nation of people indoctrinated (with or without merit) against Americans, when invaded by Americans, tends to umm, resist?

And if there's nearby regional powers where the US also has a history of meddling they might step in and help the, umm, insurgency?

Seriously, did you spend the last 6 years asleep or are you being sarcastic? If so, please use the phrase "welcome us with flowers" or "the sugar will pay for the liberation costs" just so we can tell...

Because across the world governments are tightening their grips, and some are trying to extend their grip well past their own borders. There was this saying about "First remove the beam from your own eye"

What does an athletic competition have to do with the internal politics of a country?

At the risk of running afoul of Godwin's law, Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics before the beginning of WWII. They mostly used it as a propaganda opportunity, and it's hard to say that the event led to any more openness or political moderation on the part of the German government.

I agree, I don't think it's actually going to make much of a difference. The 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow was boycotted by many countries and was led by the US, though I don't know if it amounted to much. However, this is the perfect time to air our grievances against China. When a country signs on to host the Olympic Games, it must also agree to allow the press to move freely around the country -- which has obviously not been done in Tibet. Additionally, the Olympic Charter states that "sport is a human ri

However, this is the perfect time to air our grievances against China.

The U.S. has done plenty to China, from being deeply involved in the Second Opium War (an outright invasion) to bombing a Chinese embassy. In contrast, what has China ever done to the U.S.? What are the legitimate grievances that the U.S. has towards China? Remember, you should only cite legitimate grievances, not the propaganda.

Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?

Since when has any Olympic games, even the ancient ones, ever led to to resolution of any conflict? Did the 1936 Summer Olympics get Hitler to mend his ways? Did the 1980 Moscow Olympics get the Soviet Union to mend their ways? Did any of the Olympics held in the US do anything but promote self-importance and exceptionalism amongst Americans? Did the Tokyo Olympics, or the Nagano Olympics get Japan to mend fences with China and Korea over Japanese war crimes in WW2?

At the very best, it allows rival groups to fight each other in a less murderous way for a bit (and even that isn't a given, see Munich 1972, Atlanta bombing). That's a good thing, but expecting more than that is ignoring history. The people in the "Olympic movement" that see the games as a tool for peace and understanding are just deluding themselves. Even with the ancient games, wars were only put on hold, not ended, and that was only because it was a religious event.

The only people that ever make money on an Olympics are the ad agencies.

It's not that the Olympics games themselves will actually lead to anything, it's that in order for them to take place China will have to expose itself to western culture in a way that it hasn't previously. Millions of people in China will see their first glimpse of the outside world through these games and that is what could lead to significant change in the country.

As Americans, we look at China and say "well why don't they want freedom?" The reality is that they don't even have a concept of what our ty

There are bigger problems in China than your concept of "freedom". Such as staking out a decent living. If you think the Chinese people look at their government and say, "Well, gee, don't we have a swell government? They tell us so, better believe them!" then I think you have a very badly misconceived notion of China.Maybe I do too, but I get the sense that in China, the people aren't exactly giggles over the government. It's more of a bitter sentiment, and deservedly so, because when has the government rea

standing back and doing nothing while japan raped and pillaged their country

Uh, standing back? Hardly. Even before World War II the USA was sending support to the Chinese Nationalist government. Have you ever heard of the Flying Tigers? Claire Chenault? The gunboat Panay?

There were a long set of instances of USA aiding the Chinese against Japan. These included not only the direct military aid that I mentioned, but also a number of economic tools placed against Japan. Ultimately, prior to World War II

The only comment i have is regarding your last line "The best way to help the Chinese become free, is to help them economically."

Free trade, has to have that "free" part in it to work, you know.

I totally agree... will not having the Olympics in China be a boon to their economy

That's pretty funny. For me, I thought Carter's withdrawal from the Olympics in 1980 was wrong. The Olympics are supposed to be a worldwide truce where people engage in sport. While I do not agree with what the Chinese government do

As Americans, we look at China and say "well why don't they want freedom?" The reality is that they don't even have a concept of what our type of freedom is, for them it's probably something to be feared because that's what they have been told. But the more that the people are exposed to the western world the more they may realize what it is that they are missing out on

Um, No.

First, the Olympics won't do much except to bring a bunch of well-fed non-Chinese speaking tourists to Beijing. These are only unlike well-fed Chinese-speaking tourists in the sense that they, well, won't speak Chinese.

China has a large middle class and a lot of rich idiots. The only difference is that there are a lot more poor folks in China than there are of the first two, which brings those "average income" numbers down. It's not like this will be the first chance Beijingren will have to see someone who hasn't skipped a meal recently.

Second, and I have to be very measured in what I say here, you need to understand something about the "cultural DNA" of China. The West, especially the US, is a very individualistic society. We will put up with a certain quantity of crime, homelessness, etc. as a consequence of this individualism. This isn't a "god damn America" indictment. It's a deal we've all made with each other. We like our personal freedoms, and have decided to accept a certain level of the bad in order to get the good. What tinkering is done with our social safety net is done with this background.

Chinese society comes from a more collectivist background. This does not mean that Chinese like repression, or will always reflexively listen to elders and betters. However, it does mean that there is an expectation that the state will provide public order. In short, in the interest of maintaining a well-ordered society, you can give up a little individual freedom.

Many of my in-laws from Taiwan (a free, democratic, thoroughgoingly capitalist Chinese society) find American culture to be strange and alien. The big houses and the lawns are nice, as is the open space and clean air, but what's up with all these people staggering around downtown drunk and drugged out of their mind with nowhere to sleep? Don't they have family to take care of them or something? Why on earth do they allow anyone to go to a store and buy a gun? Doesn't that encourage criminals? Isn't someone going to write a law to stop this?

Even when I talk to people in China (who have some incomplete knowledge of what the US is like), you get some interesting discussions about how the world should be put together.

Chinese taxi driver: "American houses are very big, and you have lots of land with them. That must be really nice."

Me: "Yes, but the other side of that is that it's not very convenient. You need a car to go to the market, or to visit friends, or to go out to eat."

Driver: "So you can't just walk to all of those things?"

Me: "No. They're often several kilometers away."

Driver: "Oh, that's no good at all. I wouldn't like that a bit."

Assuming that life in the USA is the apogee of human civilization and that all societies will inherently want to move in that direction as quickly as possible displays ignorance at best and arrogance at worst. Get out and see a bit of how things are put together elsewhere before making assumptions about what other people want.

Note that after having lived lots of other places, I live in the US. Like anyplace else, there's good and bad. I've decided the good substantially outweighs the bad, but there's more than one way to put that together. My in-laws all (theoretically) have the right to immigrate here. None of them have shown the slightest interest in doing so. Big houses and clean air doesn't make up for the fact that people talk funny and the food is all wrong.

I do not assume that America is the "apogee of human civilization" but it is the place where i happen to live right now, and i like it.

That's good. It sucks to live somewhere you don't like.

I don't want to be mean, because it's not my style, but you really, really need to at least read a book or two before making these "fortune cookie" assumptions about how China works. (Fortune cookies came from San Francisco by the way. They don't exist in the Middle Kingdom). I spent the better part of a decade there

I find the comment that the firewall is unpredictable to be interesting. Do Slashdoters think that this is on purpose so it can't be studied and subverted or is it just a case of banning the BBC when they have anti-Chinese content or is it just a case of a huge bureaucracy being contradictory (as they often are).

Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?

No - the Olympics will not lead to more freedom for China. The good news is that China is already on the way to more freedom, and the Olympics are a symptom of that, or rather of the new-found wealth that China enjoys.

As for the "Great Firewall" - seeing that it is very easy to circumvent, combined with the fact that the Chinese are no fools, shouldn't that make you think a little about the purpose of it? To me it seems obvious that they are not trying to isolate the people from all information that isn't

Well then, I guess China isn't smart enough. Proxies work great over in China; it's how I can access anything I want, watch my Netflix movies (proxy in the US, Netflix doesn't know where I really am), read the BBC, etc.

Because China is trying to figure out a "balance".... they want foreigners to be able to come in and communicate home, but don't want the general population getting too much unfiltered information.

It's about controlling the politics, not maintaing some information purity.

And, simply by blocking these sites, the government is able to mark them as bad or dangerous, which has weight with a lot of the population.... usually at least until the blocking hits too close to home. (As in all free speech issues).

Great point. However, the great antidote is ridicule, which no government can tolerate. If this policy of censorship is trotted loudly out on a few news stations during the Olympics, embarrassment might help open things a bit more. The foot is already well in the door with China anyhow. They are never going to have a Congress (lucky for them) but they are not like a Junta-ruled African dictatorship either.

80% of the population feels the internet *should* be controlled, and 85% of these believe gov.cn is the one to do it. If you follow the trends, it seems that the government's propaganda about the internet seems to be taking, in that less than a third of users said the net was a reliable source of information.

The Chinese also don't censor in the way the UAE or Singapore do either, in that you're going to get a Connection Reset error rather than a Stop! Bad Things! warning if you access something relating to the issue du jour, and they allow VPNs and proxies because 1) they know it's only a small percentage who use them and outside of this group there's little interest in bypassing the government 'safeties' and 2) most external business interests would be very very upset if their VPNs stopped working.

What a bunch of random bullshit! You apparently pulled a bunch of guesses based on misconceptions out of your ass, and the moderators appear to have agreed.

I've lived in China for over 3 years, using the same SSH tunnel the entire time. In addition, there are too many people in China to monitor their browsing habits. What they actually care about is what you are saying (e.g. on blogs), and then only if your words get more than a certain amount of traffic.

Enough with the misinformation. Just because you speculate that something is done because it would be the "smart" thing to do, doesn't mean it's happening.

While our posts were grouped coincidentally, did you ever hear the phase "everything is forbidden"? There was an odd sense of anarchy/freedom knowing that nothing you did would pass legal scrutiny unless you had the Yaun to for it and anything you could pay for would pass...

Not only would they have to block every IP, they'd have to block every port on the unblocked IP's. For example, let's say they let email through port 25. All I have to do is use port 25 for ssh instead, set up a tunnel to a proxy server, and bang, I'm done. Substitute any number for 25, and substitute "anyone" for "me," and you can see that internet censorship is not viable.

When I was there (in 2006), they seemed to have some kind of content filter that tried parse encrypted data streams.
Not successfully of course, but it sure made the encrypted traffic flow annoyingly slow.